Class: Log watcher

This class is meant to poll log files and take any newly added lines and send them to a given watcher e-mail address.

Although this class can be used to poll any type of log files, it was developed with the intention to overcome a limitation of the PHP error trapping system that is not able to capture certain types of errors like script parsing errors or file upload failures. Despite of this, these errors are sent to a log file if error logging is enabled in the PHP configuration.

The goal of this class is to capture the error messages sent to log files and send them by e-mail to a person responsible for a site, so any necessary action may be taken with minimal delay.

To use this class to watch the PHP error log, take the example script and adjust any values to match your PHP configuration.

For security reasons, in a production environment, you are strongly encouraged disable displaying PHP errors on Web pages and enable logging errors to a log file. A sample php.ini configuration file is provided to indicate which options should be set in a production environment.

When the mail delivery method is meant to replaced by the urgent mail function

Documentation on the PHP manual about error handling and logging

Example of an error handler function that logs the error message, the file name, line number, function name, class name, including backtrace of all the function calls that lead to the line where the error occurred.

Class documentation extracted from inline meta-document comments

Log watcher class

Sample PHP configuration with options set for maximum logging security in a production environment

Example of crontab line to execute the example log script to watch the PHP error log

Example of how to setup the class to watch a given log file, e-mail the newly added lines, if any, and exit